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JAMES BEHR, COMPOSER AND PIANIST

American pianist and composer James Behr is a graduate of The Juilliard School and has performed extensively throughout the U.S. He was Classical Artist in Residence for The Florida Symphonic Pops (aka The Boca Raton Pops), performed on TV show "Talk of the Town," and was featured soloist on WNYC and WXEL programs "Keyboard Artists" and "Morning Scherzo." A Steinway Artist and professor at Manhattan College, Behr has a B.M. and M.M. from The Juilliard School. He has performed as soloist at Alice Tully Hall (Lincoln Center), The Chautauqua Festival, and as concerto soloist with The Virginia Symphony Orchestra, The Naples Philharmonic, The Miami City Ballet, and The North Miami Symphony. He received scholarship awards from Juilliard and The Chautauqua Music Festival, and was a prizewinner in the Society of American Musicians Competition, IL; Cullowhee Music Festival Competition, NC; Boca Raton Music Guild Competition, FL; Five Towns Music Festival Competition, NY; and Chicago Music Club Piano Competition, IL. As composer, Behr's compositional repertoire includes symphonic works, piano concerto "Europa," ; four Broadway musicals (The Count of Monte Cristo, Dreamquest, E-date, The Jungle Island), R&B ballads, and numerous solo piano works. His music was performed by The Gold Coast Orchestra and The Sinfonia Virtuosi Orchestra. Behr created a new music genre called Blue-Age and made several Classical recordings of works by Chopin, Beethoven and Bach. Among his Blue-Age works are Suite Memoirs (piano), Kaleidoscope Suite (fusion Rock/Classical) and Prisms (Nu-Jazz). Behr's most recent work as a composer is his musical, The Count of Monte Cristo adapted from the famous novel by Alexander Dumas. The Count of Monte Cristo was performed in part in New York in 2010 at the New York Off-Broadway Wings Theater during the 2010 West Village Musical Theater Festival. It received the festival award for Best Musical Score. The award and performances received publication and a review from online newspaper News Blaze. . Interested parties can hear the recordings online. A composer/lyricist in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop in New York, he is a graduate of Northwestern University (B.A.) and City University of New York (J.D.).